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This sounds a lot like my dd who has a reading challenge that is *not* technically dyslexia. There are so many different skills that go into reading - what helped us the most was a thorough reading evaluation by a specialist who works with children who are dyslexia *and* who have other types of reading challenges. I could list out all the tests that were run, but fwiw, I agree with KJP that at 5 it's going to be much more difficult to tease out what's really up than it will be in one or two short years. And to be honest, even now, in 4th grade, it's not all that easy for us to understand our dd's challenge and what the best way to help her is, even though she's been through several evaluations and different approaches to remediation at this point.

The other thing I'll mention - which may sound like it's out in left field, but fwiw: my ds who has an expressive language disorder also had difficulties with this phonics and retelling letter sounds etc when he was just-turned 5 (except for the rhyming - he did nothing but rhyme for most of his 3-4th years lol). We had him work with a tutor to learn the alphabet and beginning reading skills the summer he was five, but he didn't really catch on to much of it. Then halfway through kindergarten he figured out how to read and it all just exploded from there - he was reading college level books within just a few years... but... then we started seeing his *expressive* language disorder kick in. So I sometimes wonder if the lack of progress we saw early on, with him not being able to retell orally things like names of letters or letter sounds, and lack of interest in trying to read aloud, might not have been related to difficulties with reading but instead related to difficulties with expressive language. *IF* there's any chance you think that might be what's up then I'd suggest a speech-language eval.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Yes, he knew all his letters and letter sounds by 2 1/2, plus numbers to probably 100. But he couldn't write at all. He could barely scribble his name when he started K. And the thing is, he was very motivated-- he actively tried to learn to read. But by the time K started, he was already feeling somewhat defeated.

For testing, he had the WISC, the WJ III achievement, something called TOWRE (I think) and a couple other short phonics tests. He also had to write a paragraph for the tester.

Thanks all! I'm going to mention it to his pediatrician, but since it looks like testing is hard to come by/expensive, I think I'm going to wait and watch, while possibly getting a book like Toe By Toe in a few months (I just dropped money on Ooka Island, which he's enjoying so far, so I'll see how that goes before jumping into something else.).

I appreciate your insights.

We're doing Ooka Island too! It's pretty much the only phonics / beginner reading activity DS5.3 likes to do. I can always hear him sitting at his laptop and repeating all the sounds when he doesn't know I'm listening